Minnesota Sports Forum

I'm buying the Rubio stock for sure. Where
Whether he starts or not he should get a good deal of minutes with the second unit. A big part of improving will be s more effective and efficient second unit. Ricky can bring that. Hopefully he gets a lot of time with Ant and can be a guiding force for him.

Hopefully this team turns out to be the best one that Ricky has been a part of in Minny so we get the full effect of his talents. I'm optimistic.

CoolBreeze44 wrote:

Duke13 wrote:

crazysauce wrote:Nice post. A more positive way to look at it. I still think it was the wrong decisions that were made but some things I have read on Edwards after the draft have made me feel better and things Crean said about him.

One thing that really bothers me is his teams (Georgia) plus minus with him on court to off. Thats really worrisome to me. Also our culture on our team is so terrible. Hear murmurs that Russell didnt want to play with Lamelo and Kat didnt want to play with Wiseman. That stuff angers the hell out of me. Im not a Ball fan but I would want the best player to be on my team and we will make it work whoever that is. Also I hear we moved up to draft Bolmaro so we wouldnt have to spend the money qnd would have more cap room available which I also hate.

That said I like the upside with Edwards and really think he could be great. I just hope he wants it bad enough. I love Rubio as we all do but we just have too many guards. I may be in the minority but think we need to keep Beasley and give hima shot. He looked really good last year and can really shoot it. Help him get his head on straight.

Just dont see how our current lineup wouldnt have looked much better as Russell Beasley Johnson Wiseman and Towns. Saddiq Bey off the bench and ready to replace Johnson after the year. Now we just have a hodgepodge of guys and we are talking about Layman and Vanderbilt and Juancho at our 4 spot. Just hard to wrap my head around what the plan is here.

That doesn't surprise one bit about Kat and DLo, both are clowns in my opinion. Them as our foundation worries me more then anything, and bring any young developing players in with them as our leadership is scary.

I don't know if I'd refer to them as clowns, but I have the exact same worries you do. I think this is a bad foundation and culture to bring a guy like Edwards in to.

I agree with your take, Cool. Like you, I don't see KAT and DLO as clowns. Instead, I see both (especially KAT) as very talented offensive players who, in addition to being poor defensively, are also relatively immature and not mentally tough. That's the sense in which they're not a particularly good foundation for a guy like Edwards who appears disinterested in defense, immature and not a hard-nosed competitor totally focused on winning. That's why I think we would have been better off drafting guys like Wiseman, Okongwu, Haliburton, Okoro, or Vassell at #1 and a guy like Saddiq Bey at 17. Those guys are all terrific defenders and by all accounts are mature, hard-nosed competitors focused on winning.

lipoli390 wrote:

CoolBreeze44 wrote:

Duke13 wrote:

crazysauce wrote:Nice post. A more positive way to look at it. I still think it was the wrong decisions that were made but some things I have read on Edwards after the draft have made me feel better and things Crean said about him.

One thing that really bothers me is his teams (Georgia) plus minus with him on court to off. Thats really worrisome to me. Also our culture on our team is so terrible. Hear murmurs that Russell didnt want to play with Lamelo and Kat didnt want to play with Wiseman. That stuff angers the hell out of me. Im not a Ball fan but I would want the best player to be on my team and we will make it work whoever that is. Also I hear we moved up to draft Bolmaro so we wouldnt have to spend the money qnd would have more cap room available which I also hate.

That said I like the upside with Edwards and really think he could be great. I just hope he wants it bad enough. I love Rubio as we all do but we just have too many guards. I may be in the minority but think we need to keep Beasley and give hima shot. He looked really good last year and can really shoot it. Help him get his head on straight.

Just dont see how our current lineup wouldnt have looked much better as Russell Beasley Johnson Wiseman and Towns. Saddiq Bey off the bench and ready to replace Johnson after the year. Now we just have a hodgepodge of guys and we are talking about Layman and Vanderbilt and Juancho at our 4 spot. Just hard to wrap my head around what the plan is here.

That doesn't surprise one bit about Kat and DLo, both are clowns in my opinion. Them as our foundation worries me more then anything, and bring any young developing players in with them as our leadership is scary.

I don't know if I'd refer to them as clowns, but I have the exact same worries you do. I think this is a bad foundation and culture to bring a guy like Edwards in to.

I agree with your take, Cool. Like you, I don't see KAT and DLO as clowns. Instead, I see both (especially KAT) as very talented offensive players who, in addition to being poor defensively, are also relatively immature and not mentally tough. That's the sense in which they're not a particularly good foundation for a guy like Edwards who appears disinterested in defense, immature and not a hard-nosed competitor totally focused on winning. That's why I think we would have been better off drafting guys like Wiseman, Okongwu, Haliburton, Okoro, or Vassell at #1 and a guy like Saddiq Bey at 17. Those guys are all terrific defenders and by all accounts are mature, hard-nosed competitors focused on winning.

I hate to say this for a few reasons but my take is that I'm more worried about Towns than I am about Russell why?

Ok first of all I feel a little bad about this take because Towns is likely still going through the process of losing his mom. When I watched that video he put out a couple weeks ago I saw a guy that was still kinda being strong doing all the things everyone else needed or at least that is what he thought needed to be done. It just didn't seem like he had really allowed himself to really break down and grieve. That was my take and maybe it's off. It's not a lot to go on but ai worry he doesn't really process this loss and trauma and it kinda moves him down a road that's not positive.

I wondered where Towns was headed to some smaller extent before his mom died. Now it feels like there is a legit crossroads. He has the Instagram girlfriend maybe she is fine but... Towns is a legit franchise level talent. We can't have him not reach sole level of mental ability to lead a team it would be a big deal unless someone else REALLY steps forward.

Meanwhile Russell lets be honest the bar is lower for him based on his past and stuff but I also think it's possible he could go from a guy that's questioned to a solid smart player type. I also think the coaching staff might be better set up for him. He already has a good relationship with Prigioni and Saunders is more of a guard guy and his dad Flip was really good with guards so something could be there. Russell seems a bit quirky and obviously I know him less so I'm more willing to give him the benefit of the doubt to some extent. This could be the environment where he really sorta comes together as a person. Is that optimistic? Sure but it's more of a happy rehab-ish story compared to Towns who absolutely SHOULD be a franchise player and leader based on his talent and production.

This is why having a guy like Okogie I think is good. He is tough, works and plays his ass off and also seems like a good dude. A couple National guys on Recent podcasts have said Culver will get what we can can out of his talent because he is legit that hard of a worker etc. Those guys are gonna make Edwards life tough in practice. What the Wolves need is a vet Guy (Or any worthwhile player) that will rip on teammates some. Can we get ourselves another Sam Mitchell? Lol

lipoli390 wrote:

CoolBreeze44 wrote:

Duke13 wrote:

crazysauce wrote:Nice post. A more positive way to look at it. I still think it was the wrong decisions that were made but some things I have read on Edwards after the draft have made me feel better and things Crean said about him.

One thing that really bothers me is his teams (Georgia) plus minus with him on court to off. Thats really worrisome to me. Also our culture on our team is so terrible. Hear murmurs that Russell didnt want to play with Lamelo and Kat didnt want to play with Wiseman. That stuff angers the hell out of me. Im not a Ball fan but I would want the best player to be on my team and we will make it work whoever that is. Also I hear we moved up to draft Bolmaro so we wouldnt have to spend the money qnd would have more cap room available which I also hate.

That said I like the upside with Edwards and really think he could be great. I just hope he wants it bad enough. I love Rubio as we all do but we just have too many guards. I may be in the minority but think we need to keep Beasley and give hima shot. He looked really good last year and can really shoot it. Help him get his head on straight.

Just dont see how our current lineup wouldnt have looked much better as Russell Beasley Johnson Wiseman and Towns. Saddiq Bey off the bench and ready to replace Johnson after the year. Now we just have a hodgepodge of guys and we are talking about Layman and Vanderbilt and Juancho at our 4 spot. Just hard to wrap my head around what the plan is here.

That doesn't surprise one bit about Kat and DLo, both are clowns in my opinion. Them as our foundation worries me more then anything, and bring any young developing players in with them as our leadership is scary.

I don't know if I'd refer to them as clowns, but I have the exact same worries you do. I think this is a bad foundation and culture to bring a guy like Edwards in to.

I agree with your take, Cool. Like you, I don't see KAT and DLO as clowns. Instead, I see both (especially KAT) as very talented offensive players who, in addition to being poor defensively, are also relatively immature and not mentally tough. That's the sense in which they're not a particularly good foundation for a guy like Edwards who appears disinterested in defense, immature and not a hard-nosed competitor totally focused on winning. That's why I think we would have been better off drafting guys like Wiseman, Okongwu, Haliburton, Okoro, or Vassell at #1 and a guy like Saddiq Bey at 17. Those guys are all terrific defenders and by all accounts are mature, hard-nosed competitors focused on winning.

You just described Jarrett Culver.

I know the typical play is to start your #1 pick, but I do not want that to be case here.

I know Rubio gets paid a lot for a bench role, but I want him running the second unit with Edwards. I would trust a D'lo, Beasley, Okogie, Juancho, KAT starting to hold it's own.

I really like a bench run by Rubio with Edwards, Culver, Layman.

I don't think either Edwards nor Rubio will be backups, at least not most games.

1- Rubio
2- Russell (I get the feeling that they're envisioning Russell similarly to Mitchell/Booker)
3- Edwards
4- TBD
5- Towns

Jon Krawczynski (The Athletic):

"One position the Wolves do not have a glut in is power forward. In taking Edwards, Leandro Bolmaro from Argentina (who plans to stay in Spain for another season) and Jaden McDaniels, the Wolves added versatile talent but not a hard-nosed, defensive grinder in the frontcourt to put next to Towns. They had their eyes on Memphis big man Precious Achiuwa, but he went to Miami at No. 20, after the Wolves dropped back from 17 to 25 in the Rubio trade with Oklahoma City."

My main criticism here is that if Minnesota had their eyes on Precious Achiuwa, and they're right for being interested in him, then why didn't they make an attempt to trade back up for him? Yes, they acquired picks 25 and 28, but those were never set in stone. They could have used both to jump to 19 or 20. Expecting him to fall to 25 makes little sense as that was never going to happen.

Or they could have taken Achiuwa at 17 and found a different deal for Ricky Rubio if you absolutely had to have him. Again, Rubio was never a need. Neither starting nor backup point guard was an area of weakness for this team prior to the draft. The frontcourt, however, has a gaping hole in it next to Karl-Anthony Towns.

Chalk this one up as a missed opportunity to add a potentially impactful player.

It makes me more sad to know they wanted Precious and took Rubio back instead of building for the future. OKC has no need for Rubio, we could have gotten him for less.

Interesting board here with a lot of good insights. I've read through several of the pre and post draft threads, and I have to agree with kekgeek1 on liking this draft. I don't know if Rosas is done dealing-I suspect that he is not- but right now I'm quite excited to see what this team can do.

1st pick: It's surprising to me how much consensus there was on this board for choosing Wiseman- you guys certainly were not in line with most of the experts out there (doesn't mean they're right, of course). While intrigued with his potential, there just wasn't enough information on him for me to justify the number one pick. I've seen the video of him dunking on 6'3" guys in HS and also watched video of his 3 college games. But 2 of those games were against very poor college teams with nobody really over 6-8", and he had a decent game against a good Oregon team that had nobody over 6-9"- not enough for me to project how he will perform against NBA players. I also wasn't looking forward to watching Towns and Wiseman together (and it sounds like Wiseman also wasn't looking forward to it).
I also had reservations about Ball, so my choice was between Edwards and a trade down. It appears Rosas fielded several offers for the first pick, but eventually decided Edwards was too promising to pass on. While I don't know the offers he rejected, I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one- especially since I'm really excited about Edward's upside. His shooting statistics at Georgia were not good to be sure, but he was also really the only true scoring option they had. It's fun for me to imagine how this elite athlete is going to perform with KAT and DLO attracting most of the defensive attention.
We can malign the acumen of the guys who analyzed the draft, but we can't ignore the fact that almost nobody had Wiseman as their first choice. Isn't there a good possibility that guys who watch basketball for a living know as much as we fans?

The other picks: I'll start by saying I generally don't get too excited about non-lottery picks. Sure we can all have fun talking about our favorite late 1st round and 2nd round picks, but their chance of becoming a great contributor are not very high. So to turn three non-lottery picks into Rubio and 2 intriguing long-shot prospects is a home run for me. For the record, I liked a lot of the same PF's that many of you liked. But frankly I don't think any of the PF names bandied about here are as promising as our own Jarred Vanderbilt. This guy was a consensus top ten prospect in HS, and only injuries held him back at Kentucky. He's a big body who I think has the potential to be a very good rebounding and defensive PF. And he's only 21- younger than some of the PF's we craved in the draft. I'll take Vanderbilt over any PF that was available to us in the draft after 16. And then...

Ricky Rubio: Sure, he's been an erratic shooter and finisher in the past, but he has also proven for many seasons that he flat out makes his teammates better- and KAT and DLO frankly need someone to optimize their immense talent. As does Edwards. Rubio had an excellent season last year as he again put up terrific on/off stats. And last year he showed that in addition to being an excellent free thrower, he can hit the open three point shot at a clip higher than the NBA average (and by the way, I would argue that Rubio's 3-point percentage is understated, because unlike many selfish NBA players who worry about their stats, he's never shy to put up the end-of-quarter 3/4 court shot that knocks his % down). KAT, DLO and Edwards have never had the privilege of playing with an unselfish facilitator and leader like Rubio, and I can't wait to see how he will improve their games.

Put me in the minority position on this board- I like what Rosas did with this draft, and I'm intrigued with what this roster can do.

I swear, that is not me! :)